Cloud Sites

For businesses looking to put together a professional web presence, Joomla is a solution that can fit their needs. Joomla is a free, open-sourced Content Management System (CMS) that was rebranded from the Mambo project back in 2005. I have been part of the Joomla community for several years now and have watched this application grow into one of the most popular CMSs on the web — it now powers over 40 million websites.

When it feels like the whole world is watching, you need a web site that can handle a massive traffic spike. For Villy Custom, a Rackspace Cloud Sites customer and Rackspace Startup Program member, that spike was roughly 3.2 million hits in a span of just about 25 minutes.

One of the number one questions that I get from prospective customers is, “Which Rackspace cloud product is right for me?” We have three main cloud hosting offerings here at Rackspace: Cloud Sites, Cloud Servers and Managed Cloud. Understanding what each product does might be a little confusing, so to explain the differences I like to use a photography analogy.

What’s the link between Apple, gdgt and Rackspace? Apple releases new innovative products; gdgt shares the latest news with millions of visitors; Rackspace Cloud Sites ensures that gdgt’s site stays up and running so that Apple fans can get the latest info.

As we promised in May, we’re adding new features and making changes to Rackspace Cloud Sites on a more regular cadence and there are more feature additions, site improvements and product changes on the way. One thing to keep an eye out for is integration with the new Cloud Control Panel, which is under development. For now, Cloud Sites will continue to be accessed from the existing control panel. And that’s just one of many things to come. Here is a more comprehensive list of what to expect in Cloud Sites into early 2013 (click image to enlarge):

This is a guest post written and contributed by Kevin Woodberry, a Rackspace customer who works with SME clients in Colchester, Essex, England, offering online marketing strategies and solutions. Catch up with Kevin at http://woodberry.me.uk

As a reseller of Rackspace Cloud Sites, I get a lot of questions concerning the service in general and also about my particular offerings and plans. What I find is that most, if not all, of my potential and realized clients are very technical people — in many cases more so than I am — and they ask a lot of very detailed, technical questions. Of course, that is no problem, because I have 24×7 access to a chat with a Rackspace technician through whom I can find the answers to even the most obscure questions, and get back to my clients almost immediately. I’d say around 90 percent of the questions I receive come from various directions and are all a little bit different. Still, there are some common themes that come up when my customers call. Here are the five most common questions/thoughts that I receive from my Rackspace Cloud Sites customers:

While Cloud Sites is an excellent product to host your website or application, many companies choose to compliment this with our other cloud offerings. There can be different parts of your configuration to handle your financial transactions, website, applications and media files, along with peaks from seasonal or marketing promotions.

As with all great products, Cloud Sites was built by a great team. In addition to Jonathan Bryce and Todd Morey, there were many other Rackers who put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears to create a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to enable developers and designers to focus on their product without worrying about the hosting.